The Putti Paintings of William-Adolphe Bouguereau pose an openly disturbing question. Are these fluttering Putti, naked Ninos and pre-pubescent young girls Angelically endearing or Bacchanalian?
These Images of breast caressing maidens awaiting spoil were typical of the Salon paintings of the era that saw the demise of Academic History Painting
Bouguereau is, without doubt, objectifying the naked bodies of young boys and girls, as well the frolicking nymphs abounding in Bacchii rites.
These eros layered paintings that adorned the walls of the Bourgeoisie in post-revolutionary France would have been more apropos over the back bar of a Bordello Saloon.
Bouguereau admitted changing his style to appeal to current levels of taste. His Patronage was the undereducated, unsophisticated Third Empire Bourgeoisie and the level of taste could not have gotten much lower.
The reoccurrence of pubescent young maidens ready to be deflowered borrows from Old Master themes but takes them to a tawdry level.
Bouguereau was a great success in his time and set the standard for academic salon naturalism. His techniques were greatly admired then and now for their photographic surrealism. The technique he employed to paint his waxed, smoothed- out forms of porcelain-skinned bloodless nymphs and converting cupids. His scenes of a woman’s bath that make the audience feel voyeuristic, the Dionysian surface overtness and lack of real emotional content make Bouguereau’s intent beyond questionable.
Bouguereau represents a fairly abrupt end to a less than stellar era of the French Academy. The saccharine, slick, Manneristic conventions, of his crowd-pleasing salon paintings, so convulsed the French intelligentsia with there tawdry lewdness that it ushered out the Academic Salon and opened the way for Impressionism and what followed.